Culture
University of Maryland (UMD) researchers across multiple colleges collaborated with other international leaders in wildlife conservation to produce an expert assessment and recommendations for vulture poisoning control efforts in Southern Africa. Vultures act as nature's most critical scavengers, working as ecosystem garbage disposals and disinfectors to maintain animal, environmental, and human health alike.
Proper embryonic development of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is governed by patterns of protein activity bequeathed to the fertilized egg by its mother. While the embryo is still a single cell, the maternal cells surrounding it deposit certain proteins inside it at specific locations. This establishes protein gradients that direct the development of embryonic features along its anterior-posterior and ventral-dorsal axes. Later, the embryo receives another round of maternal information, called terminal patterning, that guides the development of its head and tail.
BOSTON (July 23, 2020)--A new technology that combines high throughput imaging and machine learning could speed discovery of drugs to fight tuberculosis, which for generations has killed more people worldwide than any other disease caused by a single agent--4,000 people every day.
Current treatment requires multiple drugs for at least six months and sometimes years, and antibiotic resistance is growing, increasing urgency for finding new treatments.
Bzz! It's mosquito season in Greenland. June and July marks the period when Arctic mosquitoes (Aedes nigripes) are in peak abundance, buzzing about the tundra. While Arctic mosquitoes serve as an important food source to other animals, they are notorious for their role as pests to humans and wildlife, including caribou, whose populations can be affected by their attacks. Yet, these mosquitoes spend most of their lives in an aquatic environment in shallow, tundra ponds. Their eggs become frozen in the winter and hatch into larvae when the ponds melt in the spring.
A team of scientists has engineered the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus - a critical component of potential COVID-19 vaccines - to be more environmentally stable and generate larger yields in the lab. By solving problems with protein instability that have held back vaccine research, the new spike protein design could accelerate the development of desperately needed vaccines and diagnostics for COVID-19.
A team of Brazilian and European scientists has determined the transmission rates and out-of-country origins of predominant SARS-CoV-2 strains currently circulating in Brazil, which harbors one of the fastest growing COVID-19 epidemics in the world. Although the researchers show that non-pharmaceutical interventions initially reduced viral transmission, the continued increases in both cases and deaths in the country suggest that these interventions remain insufficient to control SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
Researchers with an interest in unraveling gene regulation in human health and disease are expanding their horizons by closely looking at alternative polyadenylation (APA), an under-charted mechanism that regulates gene expression.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The thalamus is a "Grand Central Station" for sensory information coming to our brains. Almost every sight, sound, taste and touch we perceive travels to our brain's cortex via the thalamus. It is theorized that the thalamus plays a major role in consciousness itself. Not only does sensory information pass through the thalamus, it is also processed and transformed by the thalamus so our cortex can better understand and interpret these signals from the world around us.
A black swan event is a highly unlikely but massively consequential incident, such as the 2008 global recession and the loss of one-third of the world's saiga antelope in a matter of days in 2015. Challenging the quintessentially unpredictable nature of black swan events, bioengineers at Stanford University are suggesting a method for forecasting these supposedly unforeseeable fluctuations.
The fatal disease smallpox is older and more widespread than scientists so far have proved. A new study by an international team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the University of Cambridge shows that the Vikings also suffered from smallpox.
Through the ages, the highly infectious disease smallpox has killed hundreds of millions of people. But it is unclear exactly when the disease emerged. There has been found evidence of smallpox from individuals from the 17th century while written records suggest the disease is much older.
New research demonstrates how two vastly different methods of measuring brain activity can provide meaningful data on brain networks simultaneously.
Online tools and assessments can help speed up diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the first comprehensive survey of research in the field has concluded.
The survey showed that using internet-based tools in healthcare - a field known as telehealth - has potential to improve services in autism care, when used alongside existing methods.
In a new study, researchers from Texas A&M University and industry have designed a smart technology that can help utility companies better serve communities affected by blackouts. The researchers said their single device works by improving energy delivery between home solar-power systems and the electrical grid.
There are many types of light -- some visible and some invisible to the human eye. For example, our eyes and brain don't have the tools to process ultraviolet light when it hits our eyes, making it invisible. But there is another type of light that is invisible simply because it never reaches our eyes. When light hits certain surfaces, part of it sticks and remains behind rather than being transmitted or scattered away. This type of light is called near-field light.
PHILADELPHIA (July 23, 2020) - Many Black men suffer symptoms of traumatic stress in the aftermath of traumatic injury, and they also often carry social concerns, including experiences of discrimination and stigma. Yet despite their significant needs, underserved populations often have limited access to behavioral health care as well as a lack of financial resources to pay for such care. Because of these barriers, many trauma survivors do not seek professional behavioral health care and instead rely on informal or alternative sources of care.